Chicago Premiere! Music by Steven Cheslik-deMeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt, Lyrics by Steven Cheslik-deMeyer and Tim Maner, Book by Tim Maner, Additional music by Tim Maner, Additional lyrics by Alan Stevens Hewitt, Based on an original concept by Steven Cheslik-deMeyer and Tim Maner, Orchestrations by Alan Stevens Hewitt, Directed by Victoria Bussert, Music Direction by Julia A. Miller and Andra Velis Simon, Choreographed by Janet Louer. Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, gave her father forty-one.” So goes the nursery rhyme describing the crime of the century that took the nation by storm when Lizzie Borden murdered her parents with an axe in 1892. Or did she? LIZZIE is a musical that reimagines that bloody legend with four women fronting a female rock band. LIZZIE is American mythology set to a blistering rock score with rage, sex, betrayal and bloody murder.

Based on the short story “The Ugliest Pilgrim” by Doris Betts, this award-winning musical fuses a powerful rock, folk and gospel score. With a ticket, a suitcase and a heart full of expectation, Violet Karl, facially disfigured since childhood, boards a bus and travels across the deep south in 1964 to see if a faith healer can transform her life. Along the way, she forms unlikely friendships with her fellow passengers, who teach her about beauty, love and courage and that it’s the journeys you take in life that help you discover who you are.

Book and Lyrics by Brian Crawley
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Directed by Scott Weinstein
Music Direction by John Cockerill

A surprise proposal takes an unexpected turn, upending the world of Genesis and Rashad and putting the future of their relationship at risk. Featuring two of Chicago’s most dynamic actors and penned by Chicago playwright Loy Webb, “The Light” is a 70-minute, real-time rollercoaster journey of laughter, romance and despair that uncovers how the power of radical love can be a healing beacon of light.